


This Broken Soul

by LysSerris



Series: One-Shot [12]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bellamione Cult Ilvermorny Cup, Blood Kink, Dark Hermione Granger, Discord: Bellamione Cult, F/F, One Shot, Soul Magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 07:34:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20224174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LysSerris/pseuds/LysSerris
Summary: Something was wrong.While that wasn’t altogether an unusual situation, the specifics of this particular ‘wrongness’ had her worried.Something was wrong with her.





	This Broken Soul

**Author's Note:**

> I think I have a type.
> 
> Light editing, no beta. Remaining a one-shot for now.

Something was wrong.

While that wasn’t altogether an unusual situation, the specifics of this particular ‘wrongness’ had her worried.

Something was wrong with _ her _.

Harry, raised by Muggles as he was, noticed it first. The barest hint of black had invaded the roots of her hair. It was a dark black, as though she’d been born dusted with coal, and seemed wholly set on displacing each and every brown hair on her head. To all the world it appeared to be that her hair was growing past a dye job.

Curious, that.

She’d never once dyed her hair in her life. Never even thought about it, much less dabbled in spells or potions that would change it. She was perfectly fine with auburn, thank you very much.

The day he’d pointed it out was also the day she’d ended up spending three hours locked up in the library as she went through each and every tome even tangentially related to her sudden and inexplicable change. There was nothing. After that lackluster outing she’d targeted Pomfrey and Headmaster Dumbledore, sure that it was simply a reaction between the multitude of healing spells she’d undergone after their misfortunate time down in the Ministry. She’d come away with nothing to show for her interrogations. Neither were of any help, only empty platitudes and assurances that it was just her hair color, that she checked out just fine on diagnostics besides that. Fat lot of good that did for her. She didn’t _ want _ to have black hair.

Potions Master Snape had been last, but certainly not least, in her mad dash throughout the Castle. Nothing all over again. He’d perused a few tomes, read from some grimoires, even passed her a pamphlet concerning Creature signs that appeared during or after puberty. Nothing.

By the time she’d exhausted the help at the Castle it was time to leave, time to head back onto the train and return to her everyday mundane, everyday boring, Muggle life.

Her parents knew right away that something was wrong. They hadn’t raised her for sixteen years only to forget the hair color they’d sent her away with. Of course, for all their care and insistence to look after the matter, it led to nothing. Nothing but her father swearing he’d had a relative or two with hair blacker than night, her mother dredging up old photo albums to look through her far more Mediterranean inclined lineage. To their credit they immediately set about helping her cover it up, dragging her out to a fancy hair salon on the north side of town that only accepted appointments well in advance.

Her mother had given them one day notice.

And to the credit of the hair salon it had seemed to work. For a moment. That was, at least, until she’d woken up the next morning to find the dye mysteriously disappeared, the black encroaching even further as if her hair had decided to leap up out of her scalp. In affront of the effort needed to dye her hair literally _ every _ morning, she gave up. Let it win. 

That settled her for a short while.

At least until she began noticing other changes. More abnormalities. Things that couldn’t be explained away as her body simply maturing. And all of it accompanied by increasingly vivid dreams that haunted her nights until she awoke in a cold sweat with another voice on her tongue and pain lancing throughout her body. After a week of waking at three am on the dot, she finally surmised what they were.

Memories. Dreams partially, she was sure of it even if she couldn’t remember them, but memories more often than not. The first two days had been of her own memories, things she’d seen and had happened but couldn’t recall during her waking moments. But asleep? Her mind seemed to focus on them with a pin point accuracy.

The fight at the Ministry.

A woman at her neck. Captivity or as a hostage, whatever it was, she was held still and straight with a sharp wand pressing uncomfortably between her throat and muscle. She remembered that, but everything after was a blur of movement that all led to a dark spot occupying a shelf in her mind, all thought and knowledge of the event blacked out until she’d awoken within the infirmary.

But these dreams, these memories, they spoke of different events. They spoke of the woman at her back - _ warm and soft and harsh in all the right places _\- stealing her away when Harry made his move, her body pulling apart into smoke and mist faster than she could blink. She’d been carried throughout the halls and through doors, the woman attempting to either find a way out or a place to hide; she wasn’t sure which.

In the end her searching had done her no good. Hermione had been filled with an all encompassing _ need _ to get away, to break out from this unnatural form of transport. Her intense need and frightened state had triggered some low-lying pocket of Magic, accidental or not, and the results had been explosive. One minute she was being whisked away, the next she was shot apart from the woman and smashing into a wall in an unused corridor, her back and neck snapping painfully against marble until she’d passed out.

Now those moments of flight were back. That memory of crashing apart with an unfamiliar force, tearing her way out, pulling something out with her.

\---

The rest of her time away from Hogwarts revealed the depths of her sudden changes. Her eyes had once been a honey brown akin to whiskey or bourbon, light and airy with just a tinge of darkness to give them an edge. Now though, they were dark as a moonless night. Her skin had once been sun-kissed and tan, had practically been that way ever since she was born (with exception to the orange tabby look she’d tried out in Second year), and now the color was draining right out. She looked, and felt, like she’d been locked inside for days and weeks on end. 

Where her hair once curled and frizzed with volume it now lay curved and looping, tight curls interweaving and stealing away her volume. She couldn’t complain much about that change, other than it happening overnight and startling her mother into asking what she’d done to it, but it was the most welcome of all so far.

The changes to her magic were the worst.

The law was beaten into their heads each and every week before a break. Absolutely _ no _ magic allowed outside of school grounds. Each muggleborn was reminded well in advance of their stepping onto the train, each Head of House taking great care to impress upon them the importance of following that particular law. Not that the halfblood or pureblood children needed follow it. They all lived with family who were magical, family whose signatures would cover up the odd bit of juvenile magic.

She hated that. On principle and in practice.

Until a month into this summer. She’d been born in late Nineteen Seventy Nine, gone to Hogwarts as a twelve year old instead of eleven, a consequence of her birth date and the odd timing of their school term. It seemed that her late bloom and extended time playing around with a Time Turner during her third year had paid off. 

She was free from the Trace.

At first, she hadn’t been able to believe it, eagerly running up the stairs back to her room and rooting through her trunk to find her wand. The owl that had delivered the official looking letter had taken off as soon as she’d unstrung it from his leg, a peck on the wrist and a hoot the only confirmation that she hadn’t just imagined the delivery. A golden envelope bearing her name and address had contained within itself a single sheet of parchment folded into thirds.

The words contained within were incredible. The trace removed, she was at the age of majority, she was _ free _.

Of course her magic chose that moment, that test spell, as the appropriate time to run wild.

It was a simple spell that should have led to a quick and simple levitation. She’d meant to move the books stacked atop her wardrobe down to a shelf behind her, one movement, quickly. Instead of the books lifting up with practiced ease, her wand had shattered into a million tiny shards of splinters and toothpicks that rocketed outwards with enough force to cut through her simple shirt and embed themselves in her skin and clothes. A quickly raised forearm was the only thing that saved her eyesight.

Diagon had easily supplied her with a new wand, and Ollivander had been as much a treat as the first time she’d visited. He’d given her a look over when she’d walked in through his doors, his eyebrows lifting and mouth pulling to the side in something of a smirk, something of a grimace. She’d not paid it much mind, eager as she was to obtain a new implement to channel herself through, and had instead approached him with questions and queries as to why a finely tuned wand would suddenly turn into a live hand grenade. He waxed on about the intricacies of the soul, a topic she was neither interested in nor learned about, and eventually settled on a simple, _ ‘I don’t know.’ _

They’d moved on from that once it became clear that the intricacies of the episode were beyond the two of them, Ollivander engaging her in light-hearted school banter in lieu of talking about the obvious return of You-Know-Who. He worked quickly, stacks of boxes disappearing in a flash as he muttered and shifted about the back end of his shop. When he found her a replacement it was like stepping into a pair of well-worn shoes, comfortable and fitting in a way that brought an ease to her step that she’d never even known she’d needed.

Dragon Heartstring bound up in walnut, the wood grain heavy and patterned in such a way that confused the eye to stare too long. Ten and three quarters inches, polished down to a silken finish that was smooth and warm beneath her fingers. The jolt she received upon picking it up had lifted her off the balls of her feet and sent a shockwave of warmth and magic traveling into her body as it rode tendons and blood vessels, her entire self heating at the sudden acceptability.

Holding the wand within her grasp felt like someone warm and strong soothing a hidden portion of her soul.

\---

The nightmares continued on into late summer unabated, the memories morphing from a repeat of the Ministry to a smaller form wandering about a giant home, two younger girls stuck to either side of her. An older man with black hair and darker eyes berating her for things she could not remember. Words she couldn’t recall. Waking from those dreams left her with the distinct impression that he’d never spoken a kind word in his life, cursing her and the two she’d been with for something of their birth that had been beyond their control. Waking also brought pity for the brunette who was nearly her height, sadness for the blonde that refused to let go of her hand. She, and by extension they, were unknowing of the reasoning behind the punishments. Her waking breath brought vows and pleas to protect them.

\---

The arrival of the school year brought with it the last of her patience in regard to her two toned hair. In a fit of rage she’d transfigured the whole length black, unable to stand the dichotomy of a color she’d once been with the color her body now wanted. 

Her mother hugged her goodbye on the platform to the train, a faint glimmer floating from her eye in suggestion of confusion and dismay (Where had her darling child gone?), but nothing was said between them. There was nothing to be said. 

What little she had in the way of friends had noticed the change in appearance as soon as she’d stepped between compartments, with many from Gryffindor muttering beneath their breath and pointing at her when they believed she wasn’t looking. Some expressed confusion, others congratulated her on the change, but none seemed to notice the darkness to her eyes. None commented on how they appeared to all the world to have become a pair of bottomless wells, pools of pitch and tar that would swallow one up if they ventured too close. 

Ronald gave her a slight nod and a widened berth in the compartment, while Harry shivered and startled at the sight of her. When questioned he’d brushed it off with the excuse of her reminding him of someone, but she wasn’t one to let the sudden tensing of his muscles, the twitch of his hand toward his wand, go by unnoticed.

She swore she could almost see fear in his eyes.

Malfoy was another matter entirely. When he caught sight of her down the long space between their chosen cars he’d made a double-take, eyes widening in fear and surprise. One second, two, then a blankness washed over his features as he turned away.

\---

Classes were a bore, with the exception of potions. Harry had lucked into finding a copy of their textbook riddled all along the margins with notes and theory work on a multitude of subjects both mundane and divine. It hadn’t taken the work of a few seconds to swipe it out from his bag when his back was turned away.

That night, as she perused the book and took down notes of her own in a journal she’d picked up, she couldn’t reason out exactly why she’d taken it. It might have been the fact that it led him towards effortlessly winning the phial of Liquid Luck. Or maybe it was the small bit of pent-up resentment at him finding a way to out think her without even trying. The sight of him reading from it had incensed her into displeasure and in that moment of anger she’d taken the book for herself.

Everything else seemed normal, all things considered, at least until she’d managed to voraciously eat up the remnants of the library that she hadn’t gotten to in years past. Until her midnight dreams of cruelty morphed into a kindly smiling man, whose name she always managed to forget, asking after her and _ her _ sisters, offered tutelage in return for service. Until that same man finally bade her open her eyes and seek out the darker portions of what she’d skimmed and skipped over.

Contrary to popular opinion the Restricted section of the library contained within it many dark and tumultuous tomes, copies and versions that had become rarer and rarer over time as crusades against the dark pushed them ever towards the boundary of extinction. These tomes housed dark things, dark words and darker ruminations on topics best left discussed only late at night, in ritual hollows built for blood and magic.

And one night, amid a memory of sharply cracking whips and screams that rocked her heart, he _ commanded _ her to test what she was learning. Commanded her to pick up her wand and instead of simply imbibing the knowledge, apply it. _ Use it. _

And so she had.

\---

The Room of Requirement had serviced the DA all throughout the prior year, and while it no longer was needed to function as a secret meeting place, multiple students still sought it out for private study. She quickly became one of them. She’d tread out at night on feet as silent as a mouse and head up around the halls and stairways that remained eerily silent in her passing. 

Her conjuring of the Room included a locked door that she could shut tight against the fear of intruders or interlopers. On some nights the room was already locked shut, door available but handle unwilling to open. On others, she had the space to herself. 

_ Freedom. _

Her experimentation started up simply enough. Conjure a practice dummy, try a spell.

The more she tried, the more she wished to extend herself and her knowledge. It suddenly wasn’t enough to simply feel a low grade spell channel up and through her arm. It became a need to feel the magic hum its way through her veins as curses of ever-increasing magnitude wreaked havoc on the effigies she summoned up. She was filled with a constant awareness of every moment she wasn’t pushing herself to her absolute limit. Instead of training with a stronger version of a Diffindo, she moved on towards bone-breaking. From there she moved towards dark curses that twisted bodies until they tore and broke. And from that stage, hexes that boiled blood.

Sectumsempra was a quickly acquired favorite. The method in which it sliced and cut a target down without any form of discretion, attacking each bit of the target without any thought or purpose. She loved it. It was wild in all the ways she found herself craving.

It didn’t take much more from there until her testing finally went beyond the realm of meer hexes and simple curses. The big three were always on the horizon; she knew their incantations, she knew the proper wand movements. What she hadn’t expected was a slightly less than perfect score on a Transfiguration test to push her into using them. The anger that had welled up beneath her skin at seeing a score of less than perfect was unusual. It wasn’t her own. It was acerbic and biting, it tasted of crushed peppermint and blood. Her dreams that night hadn’t helped her whatsoever. Her mind’s eye opening out upon a visage in the mirror that slowly cleared until she could see, for the first time, the face she wore while in the realm of Morpheus.

Black curls, pale skin, eyes deep pools of repressed anger and rage. A tinge of madness lingered across her smile, too sharp and too wide, her twitching fingers tapping a rhythm against the silver plain of the mirror as she shifted from side to side. Words spilled out from her mouth, quiet and then too loud, manic and then too calm. It wasn’t the voice of the young woman in the mirror but it _ was _ the same voice.

The words _ she _ spoke to herself were left to bang around her head all day.

She tore down nearly a hundred targets that night, each Avada from her wand crashing down with a force that sent them flying back against the far wall of the training ground the room had summoned up for her. The next night, a Friday, she’d gone up to the seventh floor with intentions to repeat the night. Arrive, destroy something, leave. Try to burn out the anger and hate that had invaded her heart to bubble up beneath her skin with as much fervent activity as she could handle.

But it seemed the fates had other plans in store for her. Instead of an empty space for her to occupy, she’d found the Room already filled. Unlike prior times, however, the door was open.

Unlocked.

With nary a single thought against it she pushed her way through the door and into the tightly packed corridors of junk. She meandered her way around as the sounds of magic and wood on wood became clearer and clearer with every step she took.

Until she found _ him _.

He was startled, as he should have been, and defensive to a fault. But her smile had caught him out, brought him to a standstill so that the angry words caught in his throat.

“So it’s true,’ he’d said, his eyes blown wide in surprise and features hanging slack; whether from fear or another emotion, Hermione couldn’t decide.

“I think so.”

\---

Her last night within the Castle was a strange one. There was no foreboding sense of dread that she usually came away with. There was no dreary summer slog to return to, no endless days without magic. It wasn’t the deadening of Holidays spent with a family who know next to nothing about her.

It was… Different.

Mostly due to the fact that it wasn’t yet summer break. It wasn’t holiday.

It was the tail end of June and far warmer outside than all the days of the month that had preceded it. That, or her blood was beginning to boil from the anticipation.

And tonight was finally the night.

Something had cracked within her once she stumbled upon Malfoy, shut away in the Room with only a wand and a dusty tome as his guide. She’d volunteered for him, volunteered to test herself in the line of Magic. And now it was here.

She stepped inside the wooden cabinet, feeling more than seeing the door close shut behind her. When she pushed it back open she’d stepped forward into a pair of arms that she could have sworn were her own.

Something had gone terribly wrong, that night at the Ministry.

But this? The woman against her whose face she wore every night? Whose raven hair was the same shade as her own?

It was _ right. _

The men on either side of her hadn’t seemed to get the memo, and she hadn’t seen them when she’d stepped through the other side, absorbed as she was with the pale woman standing before her. They’d grabbed her elbows and tried to haul her backwards before a haunting snarl left her throat, and she twisted on nimble feet to strike out at them. Magic had coalesced and then struck outwards, bashing the two of them away as she reached down for her wand and sent a striking green bolt into their sickly looking bodies. She’d been pulled from her sudden rage by the warm arms wrapping around her torso, by the teeth that bit down harshly upon her earlobe, the nails against her stomach that suddenly seemed so very eager to pierce her flesh. 

She leaned backwards into the warmth at her back and mewled like a contented kitten, a tacit agreement allowing the woman to spirit her away.

\---

_ He _ was there. The man from her nightmares turned brightest dreams. An eerie smile graced His face as He asked for proof and explanation, the hissing laugh a testament to His amusement. She was no Mud, she was no Thief, she’d been expanded and born again due to the ever-changing flux and whims of Magic; turned into something she’d never been. He found it fitting, her situation, and given the woman at her back the free rein to do as she wished with her new charge. They’d taken her Gold, entirely by accident, and sank it deep within char and Iron until only Black remained.

The woman at her back left to attend her mission, as _ He _ retreated for the night. Lady Malfoy, tall and blonde and all the things the girl in her dream could become, pulled her from the Hall and down twisting corridors and stairs until she’d been deposited within a chamber of her choosing. Seeing the woman brought back a familiarity that wasn’t her own, and at the same time was. Her mind skipped over the brief interactions they’d shared at the World Cup, in between shopping trips to Diagon, and focused instead on sitting with her as she read from an ancient tome and spoke of wonder and hopes.

She was having trouble discerning which memories were her own and which were _ theirs. _

When they were quietly locked away the woman had approached her and with a single black tipped finger traced down the line of her jaw, the plump flesh of her lips, the faint lines emanating from the creases near her eyes.

And then she smiled. Something wicked and sharp to be sure, but a smile nonetheless, tinged with the shared madness that she’d witnessed in her memories.

\---

When the hunting party finally returned she’d been waiting in Her room for hours, reading from a tome dropped off by Him. It was a heavy and ancient thing, bound and wrapped in a material that looked and felt suspiciously like flesh. When the door flew open she tossed it aside without a single care towards its pages or words.

They had been triumphant in their battle and the woman wore it like a collar around her neck, throat out and proud for display and admiration. Her teeth were sharp, very much like her own, biting and claiming as they stood before the four-poster bed at her back. Sharp hands moved to strip away her garments as teeth pulled down on her bottom lip. She was only interrupted when the hem of her shirt was lifted over her head and began again as soon as it was removed.

Sharp nails scratched at her flesh, pulled and pinched, driving her backwards with a singular need until they’d toppled onto the soft mattress in a pile of warm flesh and hard leather. Warm lips found the curve of her neck and applied kisses and bites in equal measure, claimants of ownership and authority pressed into her flesh as the warm tang of blood mingled with the scent of peppermint and pine.

A hand made its way across her front, the nails dragging harshly against her skin until rivulets of blood spilled up and over the ethereal paleness of her body. A thumb and forefinger pinched harshly against a hardened bud until the pink flesh had turned white as blood fled. A moan of want and heat slid up and out her throat, encouraging the lips to venture lower and lower. Her warm tongue followed the curves of her body as she arched into the movement, stopping to tease her when she reached the plane of taut skin below her navel.

Soft kisses peppered her body as a finger swiped across her folds, gathering dew to draw patterns against her thigh, slickness cooling from the breath that skated across her skin. She arched back and mewled in displeasure, suffering as she waited for the woman to get on with it, her body overheating and burning itself out with want and need fueled and sparked by her changes and her Fall. A sharp bite to the inside of her thigh reminded her of her place, teeth digging in painfully until she slowed her movements and silenced her pleas, the woman’s tongue moving up across a bundle of nerves in appreciation.

It was heaven.

Warmth and heavenly wetness flowed out from between her core, the woman’s mouth, skillful tongue making quick work of her composure until she was twisting the duvet between her fingers and screaming _ Her _ name. Her unexpected savior, her confidante, her unmaker.

Her warm tongue and strong fingers rode her up and out through the high she plateaued onto, a deep flush upsetting the paleness of her skin as she panted through her increased heartbeat. With a quiet movement she was pulled up off the bed, supported within her arms as if she was a bride being carried over the threshold.

And if nothing else, is that not what she was?

Courted, for nearly a year, by memories and blood and thoughts that were not her own, gifts given and Magic taught until she’d learned to trust the faces within her dreams, trust the voice that haunted her ears. There had been nothing asked of her, nothing taken, only changed. And in return she had given herself fully to the witch that sought to comfort and support her after the change. 

With a surprising amount of care and reverence she was brought from the room, still warm and lethargic from her high, uncaring of the naked display of her body. Through twisting corridors and doorways she was carried onward until a flight of stairs brought them to a wide open room with a single long table down its center. Each chair was occupied, each turned to look at them as they descended the steps into preternatural silence.

_ He _ sat at the head, resplendent in all His darkness, noble and regal in a set of black robes that shrouded His form and contrasted sharply with the near translucency of His pale skin. A dusting of fine scales layered Him in opalescence all across His forearms and face, looking for all the world like a creature of might and magic; something wholly inhuman.

She was set down two chairs from Him, her bare feet cold against the solid ground, her body folding as she knelt down to pale knees and provided supplication. Behind her she could hear whispers, mutterings, the sounds of confusion and more than a fair bit of anger. All well, truth be told, they did not know her or her reasons for joining them that night. Suspicion was good when it came to the possible protection of their Lord.

The woman at her back laid hands upon her shoulders and dug nails into her skin, quieting them all with a look of fierce possessiveness, daring each and every one to make a complaint against her claim.

None did.

**Author's Note:**

> Like Bellamione? https://discord.gg/pcfMU4F come on in and join the server!


End file.
